Digital 'Spectres' Reveal Invisible, Wireless World

German photographer Martin Klimas' latest exhibition, a series of images he calls "Sonic Sculptures," is so explosive and colorful, it just may change the way you look -- yes, look -- at music.
For the project, Klimas put vibrantly colored paint on a diaphragm over a speaker, turned up the volume on selected music and snapped photos of what the New York Times Magazine described as "a 3-D take on Jackson Pollack."
"I use an ordinary speaker with a funnel-shaped protective membrane on top of it," he told the Smithsonian. "I pour paint colors onto the rubber membrane, and then I withdraw from the setup."
The above photo shows Prince's "Sign 'O' The Times."

Martin Klimas

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Klimas' project was inspired by the research of Hans Jenny, a German physician, scientist and father of cymatics, which is the study of wave phenomena. Jenny photographed his experiments of the effects sound vibrations had on various materials such as fluids, powders and liquid paste. Jenny placed these substances on a rubber drum head and, as it vibrated, he found different tones produced different patterns in the materials. Low tones made powders assemble in straight lines, while deeper tones made for more complex patterns.
The above photo reflects Phillip Glass' "Music With Changing Parts."

Martin Klimas

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Klimas used a variety of music -- everyone from Prince to James Brown and Charlie Parker to Phillip Glass. He says he leaves the "creation of the picture to the sound itself" and, after cranking the volume, steps back. Once the paint starts jumping, a sound-trigger device that detects noise spikes automatically takes photos.
"I mostly selected works that were particularly dynamic, and percussive," Klimas said. Though he used songs from a variety of music styles and eras, many of the tracks chosen were by musicians who had ties to the visual art world, such as the Velvet Underground and John Cage.
Before they struck gold with "Get Lucky," Daft Punk got dance floors thumping with "Around the World" shown here.

Martin Klimas

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Klimas spent six months completing the project in his Dusseldorf studio and took about 1,000 shots to get his final 212 images. He went through 18.5 gallons of paint, on average of 6 ounces per shot, and blew two speakers while cranking the tunes. He used a Hasselblad camera with a shutter speed of 1/7000th a second.
The above image is a photo of Ornette Coleman's "Free Jazz, A Collective Improvisation."

Martin Klimas

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Blown speakers and exactitudes aside, Klimas said "the most annoying thing was cleaning up the set thoroughly after every single shot." Check out more of Klimas' work on his website (www.martin-klimas.de), or better yet, if you're in New York City, stop by the Foley Gallery on the Lower East Side. There you can find his new exhibition, "SONIC," which opened earlier this month.
The above photo illustrates Pink Floyd's "On the Run."

Martin Klimas

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In his series of oddly haunting photographs, researcher and artist Luis Hernan has found the ghost in the machine.

Or maybe it’s the machine in the ghost. Hernan’s Digital Ethereal project is billed as “a creative exploration of wireless spectres.” The concept is to illuminate, quite literally, the invisible infrastructure of wireless networks that surrounds us in the digital age.

Hernan creates his images by way of long-exposure photography along with what he calls a “Kirlian Device,” named after the techniques of Kirlian photography, which is often associated with paranormal phenomena. Whereas Kirlian photography is designed to render visible certain kinds of electrical discharges, Hernan’s Kirlian Device is a way to reveal invisible wireless networks.

It’s pretty straightforward. The Kirlian Device is an instrument that scans for local wireless networks, then translates relative signal strength into color LEDs. (Well, it’s a bit more complicated than that.) The device changes color as it moves through space picking up various signals.

By tracking the movement of the device with a long-exposure camera — Hernan literally walks around with the device or swings it around his body — wireless signals are registered on film as ghostly streaks of multicolored light.

“The device is moved through the space, which is then registered in a long-exposure photograph,” Hernan told Discovery News. “This process lasts for several minutes, and due to the brightness of the device, my figure is ghosted away in the process. In some pictures you can see my feet or even my blurred head underneath the light strikes.”

Hernan’s evocation of ghostly images and spirit photography is entirely deliberate, and intended to provoke thought about invisible energies in the environment.

“I believe our interaction with this landscape of electromagnetic signals … can be characterized in the same terms as that with ghosts and spectra,” he writes on the Digital Ethereal project page. “They both are paradoxical entities, whose untypical substance allows them to be an invisible presence.”

Hernan is currently pursuing his PhD with the Architecture and Interaction Design group at Newcastle University in the U.K. He’s also released a free Android app version of the Kirlian Device, showcased in a recent exhibition. Check out the video.